Take-Aways
- At 6,961m (22,838 ft), Aconcagua is far from an 8,000m peak, but it is definitely better to err on the side of warmth for the key items that could thwart your summit bid: parka, mittens, socks+boots, hand & toe warmers. Full gear list below.
- Bring your own WAG Bags. The High Camps don’t have pit toilets and the park only gives you two low-quality plastic bags to use for up to 5 days–and some of our bags started with holes in them due to manufacturing defects–much better to just bring your own supply of high quality wag bags to stay clean and sanitary.
- Group dynamics are critical and on a guided trip you often don’t have the ability to pick the other clients in the group. As such, it is always worth a group discussion near the beginning of the trip to reinforce and align on what you might take for granted in normal life: collective success hinges on psychological safety, respect, communication, teamwork, and a growth mindset such that everyone is excited to learn new skills, rather than being defensive and insecure they don’t already have a skill/knowledge.
- Join the American Alpine Club for reasonably priced rescue insurance and discounts on gear.
- Pre-acclimating with normobaric hypoxia via a nitrogen dilution tent prior to the trip will increase your chance of summiting without AMS symptoms. Particularly the lower you are from the starting elevation of 9,000 ft. Source: Uphill Athlete
- Since this is an exercise in acclimation there is a huge amount of down time. Bring cards & games.
Team
Note
I didn’t decide to write this until after the trip, so I’ve anonymized the names of my fellow 4 climbers, only sharing our guide’s full name as he did a great job and with any luck will get some future business from this post.
Miguel Martinez of Ande Consultants
Our guide from Cusco, Peru (11,000’ elevation) with over 20 years of experience whose favorite mountains are the Cordillera Blanca in Peru. His extensive experience enabled him to confidently navigate our group’s issues and lead the full party to the summit.
B – An up-and-coming content creator with Raynauds, who was thus constantly suffering from cold toes/hands/body. This trip was her first solo international trip and she was quickly learning how to navigate her newly found independence. This trip also turned out to be a pretty amazing first date between B and W.
W – A military medic now working a civilian job. A very smart, kind, funny, athletic, and humble team player. New to the world of mountaineering, but a quick study.
T – From the UK, extremely funny, loves travel, has been nearly everywhere, planning to climb Mont Blanc this summer. Goes to Iceland 2x per year and will be running the Reykjavik marathon this summer with his girlfriend. Pre-acclimated by renting a normobaric hypoxia setup and while not the most fit, experienced the least altitude sickness symptoms of our group likely due to this preparation.
J – An extremely loud and insecure Alaskan bush pilot that drove everyone crazy and was lucky none of his gear blew away after ignoring all of our advice and repeatedly placing it on the ground. Without question J was the most challenging part of the trip.
Day-by-Day
- Day 1, Dec 7th (Strava) Hike from the trailhead to Confluencia
- Day 2, Dec 8th (Strava) Acclimation Hike to Plaza de Francia
- Day 3, Dec 9th (Strava) Confluencia to Base Camp: Plaza de Mulas
- Day 4, Dec 10th (Strava) Acclimation Hike to Camp 1: Canada
- Day 5, Dec 11th (Strava) Acclimation Hike to Camp 2: Nido de Condores
- Day 6, Dec 12th (Strava) Rest day to abandoned hotel
- Day 7, Dec 13th (Strava) Up to Camp 1: Plaza Canada (16,400 ft)
- Day 8, Dec 14th (Strava) Up to Camp 2: Nido de Condores (18,000 ft)
- Day 9, Dec 15th (Strava) Acclimation Hike to Camp 3: Cholera (19,600 ft)
- Day 10, Dec 16th (Strava) Summit Day! (22,837 ft)
- Day 11, Dec 17th (Strava) Camp 2: Nido de Condores down to Base Camp: Plaza de Mulas
- Day 12, Dec 18th (Strava) Base Camp: Plaza de Mulas to trailhead
Key Moments
Summit Day
Launch
Alarms jolted us awake at 2am. We slowly bundled up head-to-toe in our full summit gear and upon emerging from the tent found Miguel had already started boiling water. We had oats and coffee under a clear sky with a one-day-past-full moon, double checked the contents of our packs, and at 3:30am began our journey to the summit.
Cold Feet
By 5:05am B’s toes were cold and numb. This was a problem for her, but also for the group as T’s feet were cold and I had been alternatingly balling up and swinging my hands all morning to keep them warm. After spending 20 minutes struggling to warm up B’s feet on the side of the trail we pushed on to Camp 3, where Inka Expeditions had an unoccupied dome and M, W, and J set about warming B’s toes with massage and additional toe warmers. After 40 minutes, T’s toes were going numb and he wiggled and swung them without being able to regain much warmth–we needed to resume our ascent. Fortunately the weather was beautiful and the sun was beginning to rise and in the next 45 minutes the warm rays combined with the uphill effort had warmed everyone up.
The Traverse
After Camp 3 there is a consistent climb up to a ridge that you cross and then there’s a long traverse across the huge scree field that you can see from above Camp 2. It had the strongest steady wind of the day and had it been a colder day it would have been very cold. There was a group of Germans that we met at Plaza de Mulas who got mild frostbite on their hands and faces while crossing this cold section–fortunately we had warmer weather. Midway across there is a rest spot for about 5 people to warm up behind a pinnacle wind break.
Cave to Summit
Acute Mountain Sickness. From The Cave to the summit I had the coordination of being drunk. I also noticed my speech sounded distant to myself. The terrain was loose rocks in dirt such that it was often two steps forward with one slide back. When the steps were big I was taking a step, counting to 8, and then taking another step. Miguel saw this and taught me to take more smaller steps for better consistent progress forward with less exertion. Instead of going straight up he would snake his way back and forth along short made up switchbacks. J had bursts of energy and charged ahead with another group up onto the ridge where he waited 45 min for the rest of us. T methodically put one foot in front of the other–not feeling AMS, but feeling the exhaustion of the big effort. B was nauseous, wobbly and struggling to eat or drink. W kept telling me he felt like he was going to pass out. When we got to The Cave, B immediately laid face down on the ground.
Funniest Moment
On Day 5 we needed to haul 4 days worth of food and some of our summit-day-only items up to Camp 2. We had split up the group gear haphazardly before ascending and it turned out the hike to 18,000 ft was quite challenging. At around 17,850 ft B started wobbling while walking and Miguel carried her pack the final distance up to an Inka Expeditions support tent. Once inside the tent and resting we started taking inventory of the group gear. Miguel opened B’s backpack and discovered that, of the pounds and pounds of group gear that needed to be hauled up, B had only carried 3 candy bars, and all the gear in her bag was her personal gear (extra changes of clothes, etc). Miguel looked at me with the most hilarious expression of “there’s not even any group gear in this bag!”. We gave her a hard time about this until it was W’s birthday. It turned out B had secretly been carrying 6 cupcakes up the mountain so each of us had one when it came time to celebrate W’s birthday at 18,000’! It made for quite a nice surprise :)
Idle Time
Aconcagua is all about acclimating to the elevation. We played 20+ hours of Uno, wandered around the base camps, sunbathed, laid in bed, drank coffee, ate multicourse meals, and generally waited for our bodies to build more hemoglobin. Because of this, renting an oxygen deprivation chamber/device is probably a good idea to get a jump start on the process and hopefully feel better for summit day.
Camps
How it works
Your guide (or you) contract with logistics providers on the mountain who provide bunkbeds inside steel frame tents, restrooms, prepared meals, and bag transport via mule trains. Miguel hired Inka Expediciones as our logistics provider for the two primary base camps of Confluencia and Plaza de Mulas.
Faku, the camp manager, ran a tight ship at the Confluencia Inka camp with a great team of friendly staff. It was well organized, clean, and they were always happy to help us with any needs.
The primary base camp. A larger, but less organized village with an abandoned hotel a short walk away that provided some good entertainment for our rest day.
A small camp on a significant slope behind a visible pinnacle above Plaza de Mulas. We found some previously leveled off tent placements and did our best to further level them for our tents.
A beautiful camp in a wide gravel saddle from which many groups including ours made their summit bid.
I cannot speak to camping at this camp, as we did not stay here, but we did stop by twice, once for our acclimation hike and once on our summit bid. There was another Inka Expediciones dome that proved crucial for our team’s success that we used for shelter to warm up our toes on summit day.
Gear Notes
Parka
After reading the reddit post below I went with the Rab Positron Pro (300g of 800 FP down), but was then nervous that the parka was going to be too light because the temperatures were cold and the winds were high in the weather forecast. It was also the lightest weight parka of my group. However I asked Miguel and the gear outfitters at “Shelter” El Refugio Aconcagua, and they all agreed that it’d be okay as long as I wore sufficient layers underneath.
Summit Day Outfit
Upper body
- Icebreaker shortsleeve wool t-shirt
- BD Alpenglo Sunshirt
- Icebreaker Merino microgrid hoody
- Patagonia R1 Air
- Mountain Hardware Ghost Whisperer
- Rab Positron Pro
Lower body
- Smartwool base layer
- Mammut softshell pants
- Arcteryx hardshell pants
- [Carried and not used] Feathered Friends Helios down pants
Feet
- Smartwool liner socks
- Smartwool expedition socks
- Ignik air activated toe warmers
- La Sportiva G2 Evo Boot w/ Boa
- [Carried and not used] Petzle Vasak 12-point toe-bail crampons
Hands
- BD Patrol Gloves
- OR Alti Mitt shell
Head
- Petzle Actik Core 600 lumen headlamp
- Buff with mouth and nose hole cutouts
- Smith Pursuit photochromatic glasses w/ nose piece (these are amazing for backcountry skiing and worked great for this as well).
- Path Projects running hat
- Petzle Sirocco helmet
Resources I found useful in my research:
- Inka Expediciones Aconcagua gear list
- Max Neale’s Denali gear list
- Uphill Athlete Denali gear list
- Reddit: Rab Positron Pro vs Mountain Hardwear Absolute Zero parka
- RMI Aconcagua Gear List
Mendoza
In order to work remote in the days leading up to the trip, I arrived in Mendoza early and booked my own lodging at the Park Hyatt for $208/night. There was a good desk in the room and the internet was perfect for video meetings.
Once the guided trip began with Ande Consultants I moved to the Raices Hotel, which they had booked for the first and last night of the trip. This hotel was perfectly fine, but if the prices remain low when you’re booking your trip I’d recommend staying at The Park Hyatt, which has an incredible outdoor terrace above the street for wonderful outdoor breakfast and dinner dining. The hotels were near each other, so both were in a great location in town to easily walk to many excellent restaurants.
Speaking of restaurants, since our trip ended a couple days early we had a bit of downtime before departing Mendoza. I had been to a few restaurants for lunch prior to the trip beginning, and returned to my favorite after the trip to enjoy an excellent bottle of cabernet under their beautifully trellised ivy at Paisana Cantina. After such a big trip it was awesome to sit outside and enjoy a truly delicious (and affordable) cabernet under the canopy while watching a sliver of the world go by. Be sure to try their empanadas and vegetable plate!